Monday, April 30, 2007

this is the problem with these things (part2)

I have some pretty wild ideas. I'd abolish the second serve in tennis, and get rid of the offside rule in soccer.

The objection to these brilliant ideas goes like this:

Tennis has been around for a long time and its popularity is built on the current rules, it is very difficult to predict the effect of these changes. The fact that tennis made it big and so many others did not means that the rules are almost optimal the way they are thank you very much.

Note relevance to conservatism.

Thats all great n stuff but cricket is a huge anomally. They're changing the rules all the time, and it's not just small stuff like TV replays. They added a whole new form of the game, but the most amazingly, cricket awards matches based on projected performance, rather than actual performance (sometimes). I also find it weird that after waiting 4 years the final could be decided by as few as 20 overs each.